Train seat concept will make your head spin

Product designers SeymourPowell have imagined a new system of seating for trains, which allow you to create whatever configuration of chairs that you like.

Rather than being confined to the standard arrangement of a group of four, or two side-by-side, the new seats can be rotated and moved. They can be arranged as large groups for meetings, or, for those wishing to avoid human contact, as solo units. Seats can also face each other, creating a two-person cocoon, with protruding side rests providing privacy from the outside world.

SeymourPowell's design director, Nick Talbot, said the system is uniquely flexible, allowing travellers to use the journey as they wish. He envisages that travellers would pre-book their seating requirements, although conversion is a quick process. He says one possible use is in sleeper trains; seats can be removed to make space for beds at night, and extra seats added in the day to make use of all the space.

SeymourPowell are the company behind hundreds of innovative products, from the world’s first cordless kettle to Lynx deodorant bottles. They imagined a giant vertical airship earlier in the year, and the Baby Scoop highchair, too.

The luxurious seats are a stark contrast to the new SkyRider "saddle seats" announced this week which are designed to take up as little space as possible, with apparently little regard for comfort.

Talbot hopes business and premium class trains will use the new seats. Those of us in cattle class will presumably still have the option of using our suitcases as a flexible seating solution for the seven-hour journey to Cornwall.

Edited by Duncan Geere

Comments

Don't want to be a nay-sayer but how is this significantly different than - for example - the seating on Canada's VIA trains which can also be rotated?